1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to devices, systems, and processes useful as surge suppressors, and more specifically to surge suppressors useful in a powerline network.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
Home Power Line Network Adapters (HPLNA) is a recent advance in networking technology that uses a building's AC power wiring and circuits to also transmit data signals between computing devices. Typical HPLNA networking is done with a module plugged into a wall electrical outlet and then connecting a USB cable (or other type of interface connection) to the computer, e.g. Ethernet. While this type of solution has had some uses, it is not a well integrated solution for systems shipped with networking and requires several user steps in installing.
Surge protectors can be built to work very well, yet this capacity to suppress spikes in a circuit's AC power has negative effects as well. Indeed, many surge suppressors work so well that the frequencies that HPLNA operates at cannot effectively pass through the surge suppressor to the home power grid. Thus, the surge suppressor can have the effect of not making available a HPLNA network to devices plugged into the surge suppressor.
Many other types of electrical adapters have previously been proposed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,373,377 B1 describes a power supply in a personal computer that incorporates a network interface card (NIC). U.S. Pat. No. 5,510,691 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,466,165 describe AC adapters with power conditioning; APC Corp., of West Kingston, R.I. (among others), offers similar devices on the current market. The X10 Home Solutions company offers devices which, according to X10, enable a user to remotely turn on and off devices powered by an AC circuit utilizing an interface that plugs into the AC circuit. Pacific Cable (Bonney Lake and Auburn, Wash.) has offered devices that it characterizes as X10 power suppressors.
There remains a need, therefore, for surge suppressors that pass through powerline network signals while still providing surge suppression functions in AC power grids.